E-mails bring stories of mom, Mulvane senior pictures

Facebook doesn’t ring my bell, but I must say I like e-mail. Granted, there are way too many messages waiting for me every morning, but in searching, reading and deleting, there’s usually at least one e-mail from a reader who decided I would get a kick out of something they had to say. And they’re right.

Facebook doesn’t ring my bell, but I must say I like e-mail. Granted, there are way too many messages waiting for me every morning, but in searching, reading and deleting, there’s usually at least one e-mail from a reader who decided I would get a kick out of something they had to say. And they’re right.

The week of Mother’s Day, a man named Richard wrote to tell me his favorite mom story. His mom had been in a wheelchair with MS most of his life, so he had no memory of her walking. When he was going to get married, he went home to Flush (close to Manhattan) from his home in Omaha to take his mom to get a dress for his wedding. His dad was killed when he was just a baby, so his mom was going to accompany her son down the aisle. This dress had to look just right.

“Being in a wheelchair, we always found it difficult for my mother to try on clothes, so we just purchased the two dresses (one for the rehearsal dinner and one for the wedding) and took them home.”

Once home, the mother of the groom wanted to see what the dresses looked like on. As the story goes, neither wanted to face the task of the mom trying on the dresses. Well, you guessed it. Richard put the dresses on and showed his mom what they looked like. “I have great shoulders, strong and bold, just like my mother,” he wrote. “Both dresses looked great, and she decided to keep them both.”

Now is that a good son or what?

Richard went on to say that when his mom passed away 13 years ago, she was buried in her “wedding dress.” At the viewing, he told some of his cousins the story of his short modeling career, which brought loud laughter. He wrote that after he kiddingly declared he looked better in the dress than his mom, he got “the look” from his sisters.

If the high school you graduated from has senior pictures from years gone by hanging on the wall, you know how much fun it is to take a look. I have stopped and looked at pictures many times at North High.

When Marsha Slack, a graduate of Mulvane and now a teacher at Derby High School, e-mailed me about the photos in her senior class and several others, I was surprised to learn that the senior class panels that had always hung in the halls were not put up again when Mulvane built a new high school.

“The principal at the time decided that the old pictures shouldn’t be taken to the new school because they wouldn’t match the new decor,” she wrote. He also indicated OSHA told him the pictures were a danger. Marsha was puzzled then that every class that has graduated since moving to the school has a panel hanging on the wall.

Some grads in the old photos let it go, but when there was a flood and the old photos were found stored under the stage, some people decided it was time to get them back on the wall.

The Mulvane Alumni Association is helping to pay for the restoration of some photos that had been ruined in the flood and to get everything framed. That tab was $6,000.

So, Marsha was writing wanting me to get the attention of all Mulvane grads who could come up with some bucks to defer the cost. When you Mulvane grads go to the annual Alumni Picnic next Saturday, look for the donation jar. The rest of you, be a good Mulvane Wildcat and consider sending some money to the Alumni Association, even if you’re like me and would pay to get your picture taken off the wall.